Morris succeeded his uncle to the title of Baron Killanin in 1927. After attending the Sorbonne (1932) in Paris and Magdalene College in Cambridge (B.A., 1935), Lord Killanin was a war correspondent for the London Daily Express, Daily Mail, and Sunday Dispatch, covering the Sino-Japanese War and writing a political column. When World War II broke out he joined the King’s Royal Rifle Corps; he was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his part in the invasion of Normandy. Lord Killanin served on the board of directors for numerous British corporations. He also produced a number of successful motion pictures (e.g., The Rising of the Moon, 1957; The Playboy of the Western World, 1962) and wrote and edited several books, including Four Days (1938), The Olympic Games (1976), and My Olympic Years (1983).

His association with the Olympic Games was extensive. Lord Killanin was elected president of the Olympic Committee of Ireland in 1950, a representative from Ireland to the IOC in 1952, and an IOC executive board member in 1967. After Brundage retired, Killanin faced the increasingly difficult job of keeping the Olympic Games as free from politics and international strain as possible. He tried to maintain a more flexible attitude about the definition of amateur athletics than that advocated by Brundage. In 1980 he was made honorary life president of the IOC.

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September 28, 1887 Detroit, Michigan, U.S. May 8, 1975 Garmisch-Partenkirchen, West Germany American sports administrator who was the controversial and domineering president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) from 1952 to 1972 and did more to set the tone of the modern Olympic Games than...